DESCRIPTION (Adapted from the applicant's description): The proposed research will examine in detail the African American-white differential in housing values and change in housing values over time at the neighborhood level. To the extent that race influences neighborhood housing value levels and neighborhood housing appreciation, the estimated wealth loss can be seen as yet another deleterious consequence of residential segregation. The first part of the project will consist of the geographic information system (GIS) to document neighborhood level black-white median housing value differentials and change in median housing values over time in selected MSAs. Exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) will be used to identify spatial clusters and spatial outliers in housing values and to identify the areal covariates of housing values. The second part of the research project will develop multilevel models to explain the neighborhood level differentials found in the descriptive analysis. By limiting the scope of the research to the neighborhood level, to a small number of metropolitan areas and to only two racial groups, the proposed research gains flexibility to explore in a detailed, context specific way, the spatial patterns and mechanisms which determine neighborhood housing value levels and changes.